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Associate
Attorney General Tony West Delivers Remarks at the National Indian
Child Welfare Association’s 32nd Annual Protecting Our Children
Conference

~ Monday, April 14, 2014

Thank you, Theodore and Alex, for that kind introduction and for
inviting me to join you today at this conference. It is wonderful to be
here with so many friends, colleagues, and supporters. And it is an
honor to share the stage this morning with two great partners, Assistant
Secretary Washburn and Associate Commissioner Chang.
I would especially like to thank NICWA and its members for the work that
you do -- day in and day out -- to strengthen Indian tribes, to support
Indian families, and to protect Indian children in both state
child-welfare and private-adoption systems throughout our nation.
And I think it's fitting that what brings us together this morning, this
week -- from communities across this country -- is our commitment to
children, particularly Native children. I think it was the French
philosopher Camus who wrote about this being a world in which children
suffer, but maybe, through our actions, we can lessen the number of
suffering children.
Indeed, what brings us to Ft. Lauderdale is that promise we make to all
of our children: that their safety and well-being is our highest
priority; that they are sacred beings, gifts from the Creator to be
cherished, cared for, and protected.

It was that promise that, nearly forty years ago, led Congress to hold a
series of hearings that lifted the curtain and shed light on abusive
child-welfare practices that were separating Native children from their
families at staggering rates; uprooting them from their tribes and their
culture. Roughly one of every three or four Indian children, according
to data presented at those hearings, had been taken from their birth
families and placed with adoptive families, in foster care, or in
institutions that had little or no connection to the child's tribe.
And in the face of that overwhelming evidence, a bipartisan Congress acted and passed the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978.

And in the four decades since, as everyone here knows, ICWA has had a
dramatic impact. Families, tribes, social workers, and Indian foster
and adoptive parents have invoked ICWA’s core protections to stem the
most flagrant abuses.
Tribes no longer face the prospect that a quarter to a third of their
children will simply disappear, shipped off to homes halfway across the
country. Today, in many places, tribes and states have developed
productive working partnerships to implement ICWA – partnerships that
ensure that Indian families and cultures are treated with the respect
they deserve.
And while it is right for us to recognize the landmark achievement that
is ICWA, we also know that there is much work left to do. There is more
work to do because, in some states, Native children are still removed
from their families and tribes at disproportionately high rates.
There's more work to do because nationwide Indian children are still two
to three times as likely as non-Indian children to end up in foster
care; in some states the numbers are even larger.
There's more work to do because every time an Indian child is removed in
violation of ICWA, it can mean a loss of all connection with family,
with tribe, with culture. And with that loss, studies show, comes an
increased risk for mental health challenges, homelessness in later life,
and, tragically, suicide.
So, as far as we have come since ICWA became law in 1978, we have farther still to go.

You all know this is true from both professional and personal
experience. And I want you to know that President Obama and Attorney
General Eric Holder share your commitment to improving the welfare of
Indian children and are committed to working with you to help achieve
that goal.

Although ICWA speaks primarily to the responsibilities and
roles of the states and the tribes, we believe there’s a constructive
part for the federal government to play.

That's why the White House has directed the Departments of the Interior,
Health and Human Services, and Justice to engage in an unprecedented
collaboration to help ensure that ICWA is properly implemented. I
believe we will hear more about this effort from Assistant Secretary of
the Interior Washburn in a few minutes.

For our part at the Justice Department, our main ICWA contributions have
focused on precedent-setting litigation that can affect ICWA's reach
and force. One of ICWA’s most important provisions is its recognition
that Indian tribes, as sovereigns, have presumptive jurisdiction over
Indian child-custody proceedings. And over the years we have worked
hard to help protect this tribal jurisdiction by participating in
federal and state court litigation as an amicus curiae, or “friend of
the court.”
In Alaska, for example, we’ve participated in a line of cases over the
last 20 years to ensure that Alaska tribes have jurisdiction over
child-custody disputes. Starting with the landmark John v. Baker case,
we’ve filed multiple amicus briefs in the Alaska and U.S. Supreme
Courts, successfully arguing that even tribes that lack “Indian country”
retain jurisdiction to address child-custody disputes.
Of course, we've not always prevailed. Last June's U.S. Supreme Court
decision in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, which narrowly interpreted
ICWA and terminated the parental rights of a Cherokee father in
connection with his daughter, was decided over our arguments in support
of the father.
But even when we don't prevail, our legal arguments can have a major
impact on the ultimate decision. You'll recall that in Baby Girl, one
of the arguments advanced by the adoptive couple was, essentially, that
ICWA was unconstitutional -- that it "upset the federal-state balance,"
suggesting that Congress was prohibited from overriding state
child-custody law when an Indian child was involved.

We countered that applying ICWA in that case raised no constitutional
concerns, as Congress has plenary authority to protect Indian children
from being improperly separated from Indian communities. And on this
point, we were successful: even though we lost the ultimate issue and
the High Court ruled against the Cherokee father, the Court did not rely
on the adoptive couple's constitutional argument and did not rule that
ICWA was unconstitutional.

Notwithstanding setbacks like the Baby Girl decision, we will continue
to stand up for ICWA because, as we said in the Supreme Court, it's “a
classic implementation of Congress’s plenary [trust] responsibility . . .
for Indians.” You see, for us, standing up for ICWA means standing
strong for tribal sovereignty. "Nothing could be more at the core of
tribal self-determination and tribal survival,” we said during oral
argument in the Baby Girl case, “than . . . [determining] tribal
membership and . . . [caring] about what happens to Indian children.”

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What our Nations are up against!

To Veronica Brown

Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

TWO WORLDS Book 1 (second edition)

Two Worlds anthology (Vol. 1)

“…sometimes shocking, often an emotional read…this book is for individuals interested in the culture and history of the Native American Indian, but also on the reading lists of universities offering ethnic/culture/Native studies.”

“Well-researched and obviously a subject close to the heart of the authors/compilers, I found the extent of what can only be described as ‘child-snatching’ from the Native Americans quite staggering. It’s not something I was aware of before…”

“The individual pieces are open and honest and give a good insight into the turmoil of dislocation from family and tribe… I think it does have value and a story to tell. I was affected by the stories I read, and amazed by the facts presented…. because it is saying something new, interesting and often astonishing.”

Survivors, write your stories. Write your parents stories. Write the elders stories. Do not be swayed by the colonizers to keep quiet. Tribal Nations have their own way of keeping stories alive.... Trace

Happy Visitors!

READ MORE

Good words

I agree with you on the caring of “orphans” – true orphans, not “paper orphans” as Kathryn Joyce describes in her book, The Child Catchers. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the orphan’s original identity and family connection and heritage must remain intact and available to him or her forever. This business of adoption – and I do mean the multi-billion-dollar, unregulated business of adoption – of wiping out the child’s original identity, falsifying birth records with the adopters’ names, altering facts such as place of birth, severing familial kinship, must stop … Immediately. And the outrageous injustices foisted upon adoptees and their families for the past 100 years must be addressed and righted. We are faced today with six to seven million people who were basically legally kidnapped, sold to the highest bidder, their identities falsified, and placed in a lifelong, imposed witness protection program for which there is no legal recourse. Then told by church officials, agency and government functionaries that they have no right to know who they are, to do genealogy or learn about important family medical history, or know the identity of or associate with blood relatives. This is how the Judeo-Christian society has interpreted “caring for orphans”, for it’s own selfish interests and greed. Starting with Georgia Tann, the woman charged with kidnapping and selling 5,000 children, most of whom were given to the rich and powerful who then colluded with her to “seal” adoptions and cover their nefarious activities (see, for example, Gov. Herbert Lehman, NY, 1935).

Every. Day.

adoptees take back adoption narrative and reject propaganda

Lost Birds on Al Jazeera Fault Lines

click to read and listen about Trace, Diane, Julie and Suzie

Canada's Residential Schools

The religious organizations that operated the schools — the Anglican Church of Canada, Presbyterian Church in Canada, United Church of Canada, Jesuits of English Canada and some Catholic groups — in 2015 expressed regret for the “well-documented” abuses. The Catholic Church has never offered an official apology, something that Trudeau and others have repeatedly called for.

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Use the contact form at the bottom of this blog asap.

We lost our search angel

Karen Vigneault (1958-2019)

https://www.c-span.org/video/?326149-1/a-generation-removed

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ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

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Original Birth Certificate Map in the USA

Navajo Times article 2014

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